Monday, May 24, 2010

KRG readers met once more at the Yacht Club library, this time to read Ernest Hemingway's famous novel of the Spanish Civil War. The attendance was 100% and the participation was very keen. Before the reading started Priya distributed complimentary cloth book covers, courtesy of a women's group in Mumbai called Passages, whose website is epassages.org

We were all ranged board-room style for the first time, instead of sitting around a coffee table informally. Here is a picture of Indira reading Thurber's parody of Hemingway from a 1947 New Yorker issue:

And a rare picture of Joe reading from the ardent love scene which inaugurated Hemingway's novel expression for the female orgasm:

The reading not only started in time, but it finished before time too. Wonderful, if we can keep this up and everyone observes a voluntary limit of about 1,000 words or so for the reading, and 5 mins for the discussion, or a total of 10 to 12 minutes.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

DC Books hosted a discussion with the author, Sidin Vadukut, of DORK, The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese. The novel describes the adventures of a Malayali in the big city as he climbs the corporate ladder and tries to fulfill his ambitions for money and romance. It is written in the plainspoken style of a young modern guy on the make in India. It takes the form of a diary of the main character, with the strange name of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese. It sets out life in the office as he goes to work in a management consulting company. By the end of the novel, he has become a sort of management guru, and is even interviewed by one of the business channels on TV.

Sidin Vadukut and Ms Anuja

Vadukut described what impelled him to write this novel while working as a journalist with the Hindustan Times in Delhi. He intends to develop the the adventures further in two sequels and hopes by the end Varghese will have made his way to the top, and found the love of his life. Along the way will be many botched projects and near-crashes.